1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to a printer tear bar and presenter system for separating a portion of a media from a strip of media and presenting it to a user.
2. Description of Related Art
Printers are now widely used to print on strips of media. Once the printer has printed information on a leading portion of a strip, the leading portion is separated from the strip of media to form a page, ticket, voucher, coupon or other printed object. For example, many receipt machines print on a strip of rolled paper. Once the printer has printed on the leading portion of the paper, the strip is advanced to a position where a receipt can be torn from the strip of paper.
Various devices have been developed for assisting the separation of the leading portion of the media from the strip of media. These include various tear bars and presenter systems. However, prior art tear bars and presenter system have suffered from a number of problems and disadvantages. One of the problems associated with prior art tear bars is that the tear bars fail to cleanly separate the leading portion of the media from the strip of media. This is a problem even with perforated media that is intended to separate into predefined portions. If a leading portion does not separate cleanly from a media it may tear subsequent portions of the media.
A problem associated with prior art presenter systems is that users tend to pull on media before the printer has completed printing. If the printing is not completely done, the voucher may be pulled through the printer, thereby deforming any information being printed on the voucher. It may also cause the media to be aligned incorrectly in the printer so that subsequent printing jobs are also printed incorrectly. If the user pulls hard enough, the media may be ripped, leaving part of the voucher in the printing machine. Clearing or resetting the printer may require inconvenient and expensive delays to its operation.